Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) has completed a suitability study in Guinea for promoting corporate farming through its Agro Business Development (ABD) Directorate and an incubatee, Top Worth Group of Companies.
A Memorandum of Understanding to this effect will be signed between the parties concerned and the Government of Guinea for taking up corporate farming in rice under 10,000 acres.
TNAU will facilitate the initiative through the Agri Business Incubator. The university is also specialising in developing value chains for different crops such as sorghum, coffee, mango, and banana, besides others. In order to take the concept forward, the university recently held a training programme for participants from universities and companies from Uganda, Zambia, Mali, Kenya, and Ghana.
They were trained to set up value chains in their respective countries. It was jointly organised by International Crops' Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, and TNAU.
The ABD was set up by the university in 2007 to promote agri business among farmers and entrepreneurs. It has so far identified 193 technologies of the university for commercialisation, and has been successful in commercialising 11 technologies / products so far.
Speaking at the training, Vice-Chancellor of TNAU P. Murugesa Boopathi said the university was fully geared to promote agri business at the state, national, and international level, without any profit motive. Technical Co-ordinator of UniBRAIN (Universities, Business and Research in Agricultural Innovation) Ralph von Kaufmann from Ghana called for setting up of agri business incubators in Central Africa. “Relationship between the demands of the private sector and what African universities teach is too weak. Hence, focus should be on educating and training graduates in agri business,” he said.
UniBRAIN was promoted by the Forum of Agricultural Research in Africa, Ghana, chiefly for establishing agri business incubators as organisations for accelerating successful business enterprises. This was being done by providing support, incubator space, handholding, consultancy, etc., in the five African nations, viz., Uganda, Zambia, Mali, Kenya, and Ghana.
UniBRAIN planned to improve the as many as 25,000 farmers. The Africa-India collaboration was expected to facilitate sharing of knowledge and technologies with African network of agri business incubators, and also establishing successful value chains in different crops.
